Five teams from the East, three from the West, and another preseason night that promises to be rich in… rich in basketball. It’s not really fun to subdue players at 40% of their abilities, and we’re starting to find the quest for daily challenges that this paper makes a mission complicated. Patience, the real games resume in nine days.
# Today’s program
1h : Hornets – Wizards
1h : Sixers – Cavaliers
1h30 : Heat – Rockets
3h : Nuggets – Suns
Roses are red, violets are blue, Cavaliers – Sixers are on an acceptable schedule and that’s good. So much the better, because it would be difficult to be satisfied with a Hornets – Wizards opening night. A first pre-season game from Gordon Hayward – as professional, respectable and incidentally effective as the player – is not really what drives people’s minds in 2022.
In Philly, Doc Rivers’ men had four days off to prepare for this third pre-season game. We will be watching the backcourt war very closely between Tyrese Maxey, author of 41 points at 15/19 shooting in the first two games, supported by De’Anthony Melton, and the pair Darius Garland – Donovan Mitchell. A good test for these boys with such great ambitions for the coming season. The interior games should be calmer with an Evan Mobley registered in “day-to-day”, and no more info than that concerning Joel Embiid.
We continue at 1:30 am with the reception of the Heat by the Rockets. According to information from Jonathan Feigen – editor for the Houston Chronicle – Jabari Smith Jr. is expected to be sidelined once more with a sprained left ankle. We’ll see if Willie Cauley-Stein, Houston’s newest signing, gets some playing time tonight. He needs to run to get in rhythm and bring his physical presence in a racket a little… light defensively. As for the Heat, the Florida franchise is optimistic regarding Victor Oladipo’s debut in Houston. We’ll see if Adebayo, Butler and Herro answer the call of the competition: no more info on this side.
We travel to Phoenix where Cam Johnson, Cameron Payne, Landry Shamet, Dario Saric and Jae Crowder (not with the team) are all five unavailable. On the other side, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray are listed “questionable” because of small sores without real gravity. We therefore turn to the triplet Chris Paul – Devin Booker – Deandre Ayton as well as Michael Porter Jr. at the Nuggets to maintain the “hype” around this meeting. Hype that will likely fade two minutes into the game when Deandre Ayton misses an open dunk, and Caldwell-Pope and a G League guy trade straight lines in the middle of the court. The pre-season vibe: simply irreplaceable.
